


Heal Our Brokenness

by impertinences



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Abrupt Ending, Anal Sex, Angst, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Multi, Other, Threesome - F/M/M, Voyeurism, sex by proxy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 19:31:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9086977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impertinences/pseuds/impertinences
Summary: Dorian’s music is operatic and loud. The glass windows shake with the sound. There seems to be a hundred candles and so many painted eyes to catch the flames. 
They watch, eternal. 
She watches with them, a portrait in her own right. 
[Or how Vanessa is a voyeur.]





	

**Author's Note:**

> This, sadly, is not what I intended to write. Or - in other words - I had this idea, but what I wrote lost shape and focus as I was writing. I may rework the idea and try again for a better, more functional piece of writing at a later date. 
> 
> Warning: The ending craps out. My apologies.

And in the end,  
we were all just  
humans,  
drunk on the idea  
that love,  
only love,  
could heal  
our brokenness.   
\- Christopher Poindexter 

 

She can understand why he likes them, the fighting pits. They are full of a wild frenzy where sharp teeth slice meek necks, where rich men strip away their proper image and bet money on how quickly death strikes. This is a man’s world and, as she so often does, Vanessa disturbs the decorum. There are few women present; they turn their eyes away from the ratting dogs with their ferocious natures, pressing their powdered cheeks into the arms of brute men. In contrast, Vanessa does not look away. It unnerves the men around her – her cold, clear composure a sharp knife slicing through the fever and bloodlust. 

Dorian, his hand on the curve of her elbow, his fingers pressing into the lace of her sleeve, is amused. She can sense his smile without looking at him. She turns and presses her mouth close to his ear, her match-strike voice conspiratorial. “I’m afraid our Mr. Chandler does not have the stomach for your breed of violence, Mr. Gray.”

Dorian’s smile is sly, beguiling. It is the timeless smile of youth. “Now you must be mistaken, my dear Miss Ives. Our American is well-suited for brutality.”

Vanessa smiles. “Well-suited does not mean appreciative.”

Dorian inclines his head in her direction, circling her away from the match and towards the exit. “And you? You are not shocked?”

“By man’s need to devour? Hardly. Man is like darkness, they are both just an appetite.”

“Are we still discussing the gambling?” 

Vanessa smiles again, her lips cautious, and squeezes his arm before releasing her grip. She sees Ethan near the crowded basement door, the collar of his coat turned up against the noise. He looks like a warning sign – a tall silhouette, his hair dark and shielding his eyes. But he seems to soften when she approaches, to yield when she takes his arm. 

“And Mr. Gray?” he asks, his drawl full of gravel. 

“He’s hungry. He will be right behind us, I imagine.”

 

 

Dorian steps to the corner and hales them a carriage, his silk scarf bright against the cold London darkness. 

“Is he your suitor then, the young Mr. Gray? Or is this another night-time errand of yours?” Ethan sounds amused, watching the slighter man, feeling the whiskey thickening his tongue. 

“He and I have a kinship,” Vanessa clarifies, smirking up at him. “As we also do. But tonight is for pleasure, Mr. Chandler, not business.”

Ethan makes a noncommittal noise from the back of his throat and lights a cigarette. He is not surprised when she takes the smoke from him. 

When Dorian takes her hand and helps her into the carriage, the press of her skirts trailing over his legs, Ethan pulls himself in after. They are warm bodies close together. He can feel Dorian’s eyes on him, his unquestioning, unthreatening gaze, as he can feel Vanessa’s hand close to his leg. When she laughs at one of Dorian’s quips, she presses her palm against his knee, pushing forward into his space at the same time Dorian leans against his shoulder. 

Dorian takes them home.

 

 

They are all accustomed to darkness. They all understand the dangers of succumbing. It is Vanessa, however, who is threatened the most. So it is she who Dorian slides his scarf around, the silk soft against the low cut of her bodice, as a token of protection. As an anchor to keep her bound.

She can feel it anyway – the ticking of dangerous steps across her brain, the trip of fire down her spine, the serpentine coil of heat low in her belly. She hears the sweet, lulling whisper of desire and demons in the shell of her ear. 

Still, Vanessa is stone. She is poised marble, pressing her rigid back more firmly against the upholstered chair, turning her sharp chin more defiantly to the left. She is the single object so removed in Dorian’s gilded room, the candles burning bright and casting their glow onto her perpetually mournful state - her wine-colored dress pinched at the waist, her hair swept up and back in propriety’s style, the lace cuffed sleeves severe in their formal lines. When she breathes, it is small and stiff, as though anything more would threaten to break her ribs. When she curls her fingers against the arm of the chair, nails scratching softly, it is her only sign of weakness. Of wanting. 

Dorian’s music is operatic and loud. The glass windows shake with the sound. There seems to be a hundred candles and so many painted eyes to catch the flames. 

They watch, eternal. 

She watches with them, a portrait in her own right. 

 

 

When he takes hold of Dorian’s neck and kisses him with force, Ethan keeps his eyes on Vanessa. 

He remembers her. The press of her waist in the calloused curve of his hand. How deceptively delicate she could appear and yet her undercurrent of iron. The smell of her hair – of nightshade and honey and mulled wine. The whisper of her fingers against his when they passed cigarettes between them and the crash of her mouth like lightning and thunder. The fire that cleansed and destroyed. The way she clutched his hand in hers. Fearless. 

She had tasted like tragedy.

So does Dorian.

 

 

He had called her mysterious – the most mysterious creature in London. 

But neither of them know him, not truly; he is the enigma here, not her. Vanessa has a feeling about him though, the same kind of twisted, scorpion sting she feels whenever she and Ethan are alone and unbridled. She has a way of sensing too much, a way of being on the outside and the in. When Dorian catches his hand in Ethan’s hair, she knows how it must feel, she remembers. Dorian’s fingers are long and slender, feminine, but his grip is tight. 

He pulls Ethan’s neck taut and kisses the thick vein pulsing there. Drags his teeth across this most vulnerable of spots. Ethan’s eyes are fierce and flinching. They are too wet – like he is struggling with the hand that holds him but yearning for it also. He reminds her of a feral dog, quick to bite, but desperate to love and full of cravings. He fists his hand in Dorian’s silk undershirt, ruining the fabric. When Dorian kisses him, Ethan bites at the boy’s mouth. Dorian tsks, like a chiding mother, and plucks at the buttons of Ethan’s shirt leisurely. Ethan is taller, so when Dorian turns his face, his cheek is pressed close to Ethan’s shoulder. He looks, for all the world, like an insolent child.

“Do you want to join us, Miss Ives?”

She sees Ethan’s free hand curl at his side, his strong fingers forming a fist. He has difficulty meeting her gaze unlike Dorian whose eyes are honest, diabolical, amused. The question is a taunt - he knows, has felt that depthless well of darkness inside of her open and pour free – but she is not sure for whom. 

“Or perhaps you only want to observe? Perhaps she is too poisonous even for us, Mr. Chandler, or too saintly.”

Vanessa laughs, soft and a little bitter, turning her face to the side. She places her hands on her lap, delicate as a schoolgirl. “I am no saint. I will watch.”

Ethan makes a keening noise. He wants to kiss her, she knows that, wants to lift her to him and crush her until she is safely pressed between his ribcage, closest to his heart. He would devour her – hungry and willing and only to protect – if she would allow it. She does not have the heart or the courage to tell him that some things even he cannot protect her from; she holds his eyes instead. 

She tells him she is with him, in this and as in all things, without saying a word. 

 

 

“Fuck,” Ethan chokes out, and the sound hits Vanessa right between her thighs. 

She is slick with sin. She can smell her own desire, the heat blossoming up all the way to her chest, where her heart pounds so heavily it must be audible. Her hands have curled into her skirts, her nails digging, scratching, searching for a way to abate the feeling. In her blackest of hearts, she had not expected to see the beauty of her wild, broken gunman intensified by a lack of abandon. 

Of Dorian, slenderer, more boyish, holding one hip as Ethan grapples with being on his knees. Dorian’s hips slicing forward, pivoting, as he fucks him harder and deeper. One hand in his hair, trailing down Ethan’s spine occasionally, petting as though to sooth and reward him. 

Ethan’s hair is in his eyes. He has a desperateness about him. He is unaccustomed to bedding men, to being used as women are used, but she can tell by the color on his chest and face, how he rocks backwards to meet Dorian’s thrusts, that he enjoys it. She wants to tell him that she would enjoy it too – that if she could, she would be on her knees for them both, to be had and traded. To lose herself within their flesh and wet mouths and sweat. 

Dorian leans down, ghosting a kiss across the bump of bone at the top of Ethan’s spine, curling his arm around Ethan’s front to grab and stroke his cock in time with the movements his hips are making. 

“Fuck,” Ethan says again, only this time it is a whimper. 

This time Vanessa sighs with him. 

 

 

Ethan comes, spilling himself over Dorian’s fist around his cock, as Dorian thrusts – slower now, unrushed, enjoying the sensation. Ethan comes thinking of Vanessa, watching her watching him, making noises that are for her satisfaction as much as Dorian’s. He wants to have her beneath him, to break her from her moorings and chains, but he will settle for this. 

Again and again, he will settle for this. 

He will find himself at Dorian’s door, blood beneath his nails, searching for a comfort in skin, as he will find himself in Vanessa’s heart. 

Vanessa will watch. 

Dorian will wait.


End file.
